On
Imagism
by
Amy Lowell
We
are now to deal with the work of the small group of poets known as Imagists.
Later, I shall explain just what are the tenets of the Imagist School, but
before beginning on the work of the two poets whose names stand at the head of
this chapter, it is proper to state that they only represent a fraction of the
Imagist group. Of course, any one who writes poetry from the same point of view
might be said to write Imagistic verse, to be an Imagist, in short; but, in
speaking of the Imagists as a group, I shall confine myself to those six poets
whose work has appeared in the successive volumes of the annual anthology, Some
Imagist Poets. These poets are exactly divided in nationality, three being
American, three English. The English members of the Imagist group are Richard
Aldington, F. S. Flint, and D. H. Lawrence, and I regret that this book, being
confined to American poets, leaves me no opportunity to discuss the work of
these Englishmen.
The
three American Imagists are the lady who writes under the pseudonym of
"H.D.," John Gould Fletcher, and myself. In this chapter, therefore,
I shall consider only the work of "H.D." and John Gould
Fletcher. However individual the work of the six Imagist poets is (and any one
of who has read their anthology cannot fail to have observed it), the poems of
"H.D." and Mr. Fletcher are enough in themselves to show the
tendencies and aims of the group.
I
suppose few literary movements have been so little understood as Imagism. Only
a short time ago, in the "Yale Review," Professor John Erskine
confessed that he had no clear idea of what was Imagist verse and what was not,
and in unconscious proof of his ignorance, spoke of Robert Frost and Edgar Lee
Masters as Imagists.
To
call a certain kind of writing "a school," and give it a name, is
merely a convenient method of designating it when we wish to speak of it. We
have adopted the same method in regard to distinguishing persons. We say John
Smith and James Brown, because it is simpler than to say: six feet tall, blue
eyes, straight nose—or the reverse of these attributes. Imagist verse is verse
which is written in conformity with certain tenets voluntarily adopted by the
poets as being those by which they consider the best poetry to be produced.
They may be right or they may be wrong, but it is their belief.
Imagism,
then, is a particular school, springing up within a larger, more comprehensive
movement, the New Movement with which this whole book has had to do [Tendencies
in Modern American Poetry]. This movement has yet received no convenient
designation. We, who are of it, naturally have not the proper perspective to
see it in all its historical significance. But we can safely claim it to be a
"renaissance,’ a re-birth of the spirit of truth and beauty. It means a
re-discovery of beauty in our modern world, and the originality and honesty to
affirm that beauty in whatever manner is native to the poet.
I
have shown Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost as the pioneers of the
renaissance; I have shown Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg plunging forward
in quest of change and freedom, hurling themselves against the harshness and
materialism of existing conditions, shouting their beliefs, sometimes
raucously, but always honestly and with abounding courage. Now, I am to show a
condition, not changing, but changed. These poets not only express themselves
differently, they see life and the universe from a different standpoint.
It
is not over; the movement is yet in its infancy. Other poets will come and,
perchance, perfect where these men have given the tools. Other writers,
forgetting the stormy times in which this movement had its birth, will inherit
in plentitude and calm that for which they have fought. Then our native flowers
will bloom into a great garden, to be again conventionalized to a pleasance of
stone statues and mathematical parterres awaiting a new change which shall
displace it. This is the perpetually recurring history of literature, and of
the world.
I
have chosen the Imagists as representing the third stage of the present
movement advisedly, for only in them do I see that complete alteration of point
of view necessary to this third stage. An alteration, let me add, due solely to
the beliefs -moral, religious, and artistic -inherent in the characters of
these poets. Honest difference of opinion leads to honestly different work, and
this must not be confused with the absurd outpourings of those gadflies of the
arts who imitate the manners of others without an inkling of their souls; nor
with those nefarious persons who endeavour to keep themselves before the public
by means of a more or less clever charlatanism.
The
spoken word, even the written word, is often misunderstood. I do not wish to be
construed as stating that poets in the third stage are better, as poets, than
those in the other two.
Fundamental
beliefs change art, but do not, necessarily, either improve or injure it. Great
poetry has been written at every stage of the world's history, but Homer did
not write like Dante, nor Dante like Shakespeare, nor Shakespeare like Edgar
Allan Poe. So, in literary criticism, one may assign a poet his place in a
general movement without any attempt to appraise his individual merit by so
doing.
Before
taking up the work of "H.D." and John Gould Fletcher in detail, I
think it would be well to consider, for a moment, what Imagism is, and for what
those poets who style themselves " Imagists" stand.
In
the preface to the anthology, Some Imagist Poets, [1916] there is set down a
brief list of tenets to which the poets contributing to it mutually agreed. I
do not mean that they pledged themselves as to a creed. I mean that they all
found themselves in accord upon these simple rules.
I
propose to take up these rules presently, one by one, and explain them in
detail, but I will first set them down in order:
1.
To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not
the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2.
To create new rhythms -as the expression of new moods -- and not to copy old
rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon
"free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as
for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may
often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In poetry a
new cadence means a new idea.
3.
To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write
badly of aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it necessarily bad art to write
well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic value of modem life,
but we wish to point out that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so
old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911.
4.
To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school
of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and
not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for
this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real
difficulties of his art.
5.
To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6.
Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of
poetry.
There
is nothing new under the sun, even the word, "renaissance," means a
re-birth not a new birth, and of this the Imagists were well aware. This short
creed was preceded by the following paragraph:
These
principles are not new; they have fallen into desuetude. They are the
essentials of all great poetry, indeed of all great literature.It is not
primarily on account of their forms, as is commonly supposed, that the Imagist
poets represent a changed point of view; it is because of their reactions
toward the world in which they live.Now let us examine these tenets and see
just what they mean, for I have observed that their very succinctness has often
occasioned misunderstanding.
The
first one is: "To use the language of common speech, but to employ always
the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word."
The
language of common speech means a diction which carefully excludes inversions,
and the cliches of the old poetic jargon. As to inversions, we only need to
remember Matthew Arnold's famous parody on this evil practice in his essay,
"On Translating Homer":
Yourself,
how do you do,
Very
well, you I thank.
But,
until very recently, it persisted in our poetry. One of the tenets in which all
the poets of the present movement, Imagists and others, are agreed, however, is
this abhorrence of the inversion." Cliche"' is a French word and
means "stamped," as a coin, for instance. In other words, it is
something in common use, and not peculiar to the author. Old, faded expressions
like "battlemented clouds," and "mountainous seas," are
cliches. Excellent the first time, but so worn by use as to convey no very
distinct impression to the reader. As an example of the old poetic jargon, take
such a passage as this:
To
ope my eyes
Upon
the Ethiope splendour
Of
the spangled night.
It
will at once be admitted that this is hardly the language of common speech.
Common speech does not exclude imaginative language nor metaphor but it must be
original and natural to the poet himself, not culled from older books of verse.
The
exact word has been much misunderstood. it means the exact word which conveys
the writer's impression to the reader. Critics conceive a thing to be so and so
and no other way. To the poet, the thing is as it appears in relation to the
whole. For instance, he might say:
Great
heaps of shiny glass
Pricked
out of the stubble
By
a full, high moon.
This
does not mean that the stones are really of glass, but that they so appear in
the bright moonlight. It is the exact word to describe the effect. In short,
the exactness is determined by the content. The habit of choosing a word as
unlike the object as possible, much in vogue among the would-bemodern poets, is
silly, and defeats its own object. One example of this kind which was brought
to my attention some time ago was "a mauve wind." That is just
nonsense. It is not exact in any sense, it connotes nothing. "Black
wind," "white wind," "pale wind," all these are
colours and therefore do not exactly describe any wind, but they do describe certain
windy effects. "Mauve wind," on the other hand, is merely a straining
after novelty, unguided by common-sense or a feeling for fitness.
So
much for the first Imagist tenet. The second: "To create new rhythms-as
the expression of new moods-and not to copy old rhythms which merely echo old
moods. . . cadence means a new idea.
"This,
of course, refers to the modern practice of writing largely in the free forms.
It is true that modern subjects, modern habits of mind, seem to find more
satisfactory expression in vers libre and "polyphonic prose" than in
metrical verse. It is also true that "a new cadence means a new
idea." Not, as has been stated by hostile critics, that the cadence
engenders the idea; quite the contrary, it means that the idea clothes itself
naturally in an appropriate novelty of rhythm. Very slight and subtle it may
be, but adequate. The Imagist poets do not insist upon free-verse as the only
method of writing poetry." In fact, the group are somewhat divided in
their practice here.
This
brings us to the third tenet: "To allow absolute freedom in the choice of
subject." Again, over this passage, misunderstandings have arisen.
"How can the choice of subject be absolutely unrestricted ?
"—horrified critics have asked. The only reply to such a question is that
one had supposed One were speaking to people of common-sense and intelligence.
To make this passage intelligible to any others, it would be necessary to add
"within the bounds of good taste." Of course, what one person might
consider good taste another might think the reverse of it; all that the passage
intends to imply is that this group restricts itself to no particular kind of
subject matter. Old, new, actual, literary, anything which excites the creative
faculty in the individual poet, is permissible; they are equally Imagists and
poets if they write about ancient Greece, or about a cluster of chimney-stacks
seen out of the window.
Number
four says: "To present an image (hence the name 'Imagist'). We are not a
school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars
exactly, and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and
sonorous."
This
paragraph has caused a great deal of confusion. It has been construed to mean
that Imagist poetry is chiefly concerned with the presentation of pictures. Why
this should have come about, considering that the words, "we are not a
school of painters," were intended to offset any such idea, I do not know.
The truth is that "Imagism," " Imagist," refers more to the
manner of presentation than to the thing presented. It is a kind of technique
rather than a choice of subject. "Imagism" simply means -- to quote
from the second anthology, Some Imagist Poets, 1916 " a clear presentation
of whatever the author wishes to convey. Now he may wish to convey a mood of
indecision, in which case the poem should be indecisive; he may wish to bring
before his reader the constantly shifting and changing lights over a landscape,
or the varying attitudes of mind of a person under strong emotion, then his
poem must shift and change to present this clearly." Imagism is
presentation, not representation. For instance, Imagists do not speak of the
sea as the "rolling wave" or the "vasty deep,"
high-sounding, artificial generalities which convey no exact impression;
instead, let us compare these two stanzas in a poem of Mr. Fletcher's called
"The Calm ":
At
noon I shall see waves flashing,
White
power of spray.
The
steamers, stately,
Kick
up white puffs of spray behind them.
The
boiling wake
Merges
in the blue-black mirror of the sea.
That
is an exact image; but here is another from "Tide of Storms," in
which the exactness of the image is augmented by powerful imaginative
connotations:
Crooked,
crawling tide with long wet fingers
Clutching
at the gritty beach in the roar and spurt of spray,
Tide
of gales, drunken tide, lava-burst of breakers,
Black
ships plunge upon you from sea to sea away.
This
vivid "presentation of whatever the author wishes to convey " is
closely allied to the next tenet of the Imagist manifesto, which is: "To
produce poetry which is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite." It
must be kept in mind that this does not refer to subject but to the rendering
of subject. I might borrow a metaphor from another art and call it
"faithfulness to the architectural line." Ornament may be employed,
so long as it follows the structural bases of the poem. But poetical jig-saw
work is summarily condemned. That is why, although so much Imagist poetry is
metaphorical, similes are sparingly used. Imagists fear the blurred effect of a
too constant change of picture in the same poem.The last rule is very simple,
it is that " concentration is of the very essence of poetry." A rule,
indeed, as old as art itself, and yet so often lost sight of that it can hardly
be too often affirmed. How many works of art are ruined by a too great
discursiveness! To remain concentrated on the subject, and to know when to
stop, are two cardinal rules in the writing of poetry.
We
see therefore that these canons boil down into something like the following
succinct statements: Simplicity and directness of speech; subtlety and beauty
of rhythms; individualistic freedom of idea; clearness and vividness of
presentation; and 'concentration. Not new principles, by any means, as the
writers of the preface admit, but "fallen into desuetude.
"One
characteristic of Imagist verse which was not mentioned in this preface, is:
Suggestion
-- the implying of something rather than the stating of it, implying it perhaps
under a metaphor, perhaps in an even less obvious way.
This
poem of Mr. Fletcher's is an excellent example of Imagist suggestion:
THE
WELL
The
well is not used now
Its
waters are tainted.
I
remember there was once a man went down
To
clean it.
He
found it very cold and deep,
With
a queer niche in one of its sides,
From
which he hauled forth buckets of bricks and dirt.
The
picture as given is quite clear and vivid. But the picture we see is not the
poem, the real poem lies beyond, is only suggested.Of the poets we have been
considering in these essays, Mr. Robinson is most nearly allied to the Imagists
in the use of suggestion; but the technique he employs is quite unlike theirs.
In Mr. Sandburg's "Limited," which I quoted in the last chapter,
suggestion again is the poem, and his treatment of it there is almost
Imagistic.
It
must not be forgotten that however many rules and tenets we may analyze, such
mechanical labour can never give the touchstone to style. That must lie in a
sense which is beyond reason. As Matthew Arnold said of the grand style,
"one must feel it." It is possible to determine the work of different
painters by their brush strokes, but such knowledge is for the expert alone,
and then only for purposes of authenticity. The layman who had no way of
telling the work of Titian from that of Watteau by any other method than that
of brush strokes, would make a poor connoisseur.I could go minutely into the
work of these poets and show how each differs from the other -- the varying
modes of expression, the individual ways of using words, the changing
progression of the phrases, the subtle originality of rhythms -- but any one
who could intelligently follow such an analysis would have no difficulty in
determining Imagist work per se; and those who could not tell it at a glance,
would find such hair-splitting dissection totally incomprehensible.
A
few broad lines, then, shall serve us here, and I trust that, before I have
finished, the reader will be incapable of making the blunder of that recent
critic, who placed Mr. Frost and Mr. Masters in the Imagist group.I have shown
certain aspects of the Imagist idiom, but we must not lose sight of the fact
that all these barriers are arbitrary, and fade somewhat into each other. Much
of this idiom is applicable to the other poets whom we have been considering,
as well; some of it is peculiar to the Imagists. But it is principally in their
manner of dealing with the idiom that we shall find the difference to lie. Let
me insist once more that Imagism is only one section of a larger movement to
which the six poets of these essays all belong.
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